Jenny straightened. “The man you were talking to outside?”
“Yes.”
Lyra spoke next. “Why now?”
I picked up the envelope.
“He brought this. I need you to sit down.”
They did.
They didn’t interrupt while I spoke. That surprised me.
I explained the letter first.
The debts. The pressure. The decisions Edwin made.
And why he believed leaving would protect them.
Jenny looked away halfway through. Lyra leaned forward, focused. Dora stared at the table.
Then I showed them the documents.
“This is everything your father rebuilt. Every debt and account. It’s all cleared.”
Lyra picked up a page and scanned it.
“Is this… real?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s all in our names?”
I nodded.
Dora finally spoke.
“So he just left… fixed everything… and came back with paperwork?”
I sighed.
Jenny pushed her chair back slightly.
“I don’t care about the money,” she said. “Why didn’t he come back sooner?”
That was the question. The one I’d asked myself a hundred ways in the past hour.
I shook my head.
“I don’t have a better answer than what’s in the letter.”
She exhaled and looked down.
Lyra placed the papers neatly back on the table.
“We should talk to him.”
Dora looked up. “Right now?!”
“Yeah,” Lyra said. “We’ve waited long enough, haven’t we?”
I nodded.
